Chapter 591 [Layered Waves] and the Battle Posture Path

He had pushed himself to the absolute limit, playing every last card in his hand.

Punch after punch.

By the end of the battle, Xia Nan had drained nearly every last drop of his physical and mental stamina.

When he first activated [Ember Echoes], he could still formulate makeshift strategies and adjust his attacks to the shifting battlefield. But by the time he lost both main weapons, forcing him to rely on his dagger and eventually his bare fists, he was fighting entirely on instinct.

His only thought was to smash the skull of the monster in front of him.

And as it turned out, he had done exactly that.

Staring down at the mass of flesh beneath him—the Shark Beast's head, hammered into an unrecognizable paste that had lost all trace of its original shape—Xia Nan's cold face, caked in blood and grit, remained devoid of emotion.

Yet, looking closely, his dark eyes had grown dazed and hollow from the severe overexertion.

His control over his body had slipped from the massive mental drain. Even though he knew the battle was over and his enemy was dead, his raised right arm—bone jutting through the skin of his knuckles—continued to coil with power out of sheer muscle memory, poised to deliver yet another heavy blow to the dead pulp beneath him.

Right then, a soft weight suddenly caught his arm.

The halfling Alton had jumped onto the Shark Beast's corpse. Standing on his tiptoes, he tightly hugged Xia Nan's raised arm with both hands.

"It's over, Xia Nan."

"It's all over—"

Hearing his friend's familiar voice, the arm held high by muscle memory went stiff, and a sliver of light returned to his vacant dark eyes.

His tense muscles quietly relaxed. His five fingers, practically glued together by blood and gore, slowly uncurled from their fist.

'It's over?'

He looked down again at the mashed flesh of the Shark Beast's head.

'Yeah, it's over.'

His stagnant thoughts finally began to turn again.

Having reached his limit long ago and only hanging on through sheer willpower, Xia Nan felt his entire body go slack as the last breath of fight left him.

Pain, exhaustion, emptiness—darkness swallowed his blurry vision like a rising tide.

As the world spun, he seemed to remember something.

Rousing himself one last time, he shifted his gaze to the Shark Beast's chest.

While the [Dream Weaving Corridor] ring violently vibrated, he forcefully dug the metal band out of the monster's mangled chest with his bare hand and clutched it tight.

Only then did his vision go black. He fell backward and passed out.

Xia Nan's second charge had drastically shifted the tide of the battlefield.

His first strike had eliminated the Sahuagin's ranged spellcaster, freeing the adventurers from the constant fear of magical flares shooting from beneath the sea.

His second, after activating [Ember Echoes], saw him do something primal, brutal, and visually staggering in front of the remaining adventurers and all the Sahuagin: punch by punch, he battered the massive Bloodskin Shark Beast—the creature that had been slaughtering adventurers with overwhelming force, the very spiritual pillar of the Sahuagin—into a headless corpse.

This immensely boosted the morale of the surviving adventurers and utterly shattered the fishmen's psychological defenses.

Although they appeared as a massive army, the back-to-back deaths of their two commanders left the remaining Sahuagin entirely unable to mount a defense against the adventurers' counterattack, even if their overall strength still surpassed that of the survivors.

After barely holding on for another dozen minutes, the remnants of the fishmen on the beach howled as they were driven back into the sea.

This handed the adventurers the final victory of the battle.

When Xia Nan woke up again, the first thing he saw was a high ceiling adorned with a crystal chandelier.

Beneath him was the plush softness of a premium sofa. Pressing his hands down to support himself, he subconsciously tried to sit up.

But a sharp pain suddenly flared in his right hand.

He looked over to see that his right hand—whose flesh had been ground away during the battle to expose the stark white bone beneath—had received basic healing and was carefully and thoroughly wrapped in bandages.

Before he could think much of it, a familiar voice called out from the side, having noticed him stirring.

"Hey, Xia Nan, you're awake?"

"How is your body feeling?"

The halfling Alton was sitting on a wooden chair opposite the sofa, his legs dangling in the air. Seeing Xia Nan awake, his face filled with pleasant surprise.

Before Xia Nan could even ask a question, Alton happily hopped down from the chair and trotted hastily toward the kitchen.

"Wait right there, my stew is almost ready."

"Just five minutes!"

Xia Nan opened his mouth, but as he watched the halfling's back disappear behind the door, he could only swallow the questions at his throat and observe his surroundings.

He was most likely still on Stodd Island, but his location had changed from the expansive, blood-soaked coastline littered with corpses to a large, opulently decorated manor. He could faintly hear the chirping of birds and insects coming from the garden outside the window.

He was currently lying in what appeared to be a side hall on the ground floor of the estate.

Glancing around, he noticed that the fine plush carpet was stained with blood and sand from the beach. Medical supplies like torn bandages and ointment bottles were scattered nearby, making it clear they hadn't been here for long.

The straight sword [Ember Fall], the wooden sword [Azure Pine], and the dagger [Honey Tangerine] were laid out neatly within reach.

As for the metal ring he had plucked from the Shark Beast's chest before passing out, it sat untouched on a nearby tea table.

Fighting through the weakness and pain radiating from every part of his body, Xia Nan struggled up from the spacious, soft sofa. His thick leather boots, heavily scarred from battle, had already been removed and set aside, leaving his bare feet to touch the soft carpet.

Gripping the sofa's armrest to steady his balance, Xia Nan swayed as he stood. He sheathed his weapons, stepped forward, and picked up the [Dream Weaving Corridor] key from the tea table. He had intended to inspect it and figure out exactly how to use it, but the moment his fingers curled around the metal ring, a fresh set of footsteps echoed from the other side of the hall, likely drawn by his earlier exchange with Alton.

The side hall's door was pushed open from the outside.

Walking into view was Ryan, one of the twin warriors from the Blade of Vengeance fleet, who had previously stayed behind to guard the ships at the port.

Seeing that Xia Nan was awake and had even recovered enough mobility to appear mostly fine, the burly man breathed a sigh of relief.

Then, as if recalling something, his expression turned slightly strange.

Without missing a beat, he hurried forward to support the heavily injured Xia Nan.

"How long was I out? What's the situation now? What about the fishmen? Did the fleet suffer any casualties, and—"

Having finally encountered another person, Xia Nan couldn't hold back his barrage of questions.

But perhaps he had asked too much at once, leaving the normally stoic human warrior unsure of how to answer.

In the end, Ryan just shook his head and motioned for Xia Nan to follow him.

After getting a nod from Xia Nan, he helped guide him out of the room and into the estate's main hall.

The sight that greeted him could only be described as a full house.

Captain Lorraine was leaning all the way back into a sofa, puffing clouds of smoke from a cigarette dangling from her lips. Her lower leg, twisted and broken in the fight, was secured with a splint and wrapped in layers upon layers of bandages;

The Tabaxi, Sasha, had stripped off his completely ruined light armor and was gently stroking his fluffy long tail, which had lost a massive patch of fur during the battle, a look of pure heartache on his face;

Beside him sat Ellison, equally swathed in bandages. Despite having met only recently, the two had bonded over shared hobbies. Ellison held a small tray of brown paint he'd found somewhere, seemingly brainstorming a fix for his fishing buddy's balding tail;

The druid Hein sat pale on a recliner by the window, meditating while basking in the sun alongside her silver-banded snake;

Aken, the barbarian who had suffered the heaviest injuries, still looked visibly weak and far from fully recovered. Yet, unwilling to rest on the sofa, he was absentmindedly cleaning the dried blood and grime off his axe blade.

Taking in the scene, Xia Nan had to admit that a subconscious wave of relief washed over him.

After all, he had personally watched these teammates from the Blade of Vengeance take the brunt of the Shark Beast's blood-light shockwave.

By the time he activated [Ember Echoes] for his second charge, they had all been critically wounded.

With the battlefield shifting so rapidly, there was no telling if some fatal accident might have occurred.

Having fought alongside them for so long, even if they weren't exactly family, Xia Nan genuinely considered the members of the Blade of Vengeance his friends.

If any of them had actually died in the fight—it would have been hard to accept.

Thankfully, from the looks of things, while they all bore varying degrees of injuries, none of them were in mortal danger. They had all survived the battle.

Meanwhile, the moment Xia Nan stepped into the room, the somewhat noisy environment instantly went dead silent.

A barrage of peculiar, conflicted gazes landed on him simultaneously.

In truth, the group couldn't be blamed for their reaction.

Even though their past experiences had given them an idea of Xia Nan's strength, watching a man walk into the room who had just battered a terrifying monster—one that nearly wiped out the entire fleet—into a pulp with his bare hands... it naturally evoked a strong reaction.

Of course, the silence was only temporary.

Once they realized Xia Nan had woken up and was more or less fine, the lively atmosphere returned to the hall.

Sitting down beside Captain Lorraine, he accepted a cup of hot tea from Ryan and took a sip with narrowed eyes.

Feeling the warmth of the tea spread through his body beneath a clean blanket, Xia Nan surrendered his weight to the sofa and asked, "What's the situation on the island now?"

Lorraine pinched the cigarette from her lips with her thumb and index finger, blowing out a puff of white smoke.

She appeared equally relaxed, savoring this brief moment of respite after the battle.

"You were out for about two days."

"After their priest and the Shark Beast died, the fishmen on the beach lost their morale. They quickly routed and fled back into the sea."

"But the adventurers suffered heavy casualties as well."

"Our Blade of Vengeance got off lucky. Besides the two who stayed at the port, the rest of us are basically critically injured, but at least we didn't lose anyone."

"As for the others, like the Windforged and the Raging Tide Warband, they were practically wiped out. I doubt we'll be hearing their names in the Southern Archipelagos anymore."

After the battle on the beach concluded, the adventurers urgently cleared the battlefield and brought their wounded back to town to rest and resupply.

The manor they were currently staying in had been requisitioned from a wealthy local family. The original owner and his relatives had been killed earlier by the invading fishmen, their bodies dragged off for sacrifices.

Thanks to Xia Nan's outstanding performance on the battlefield, the remaining Sahuagin forces had quickly collapsed. However, likely due to orders previously issued by their commanders, the fishmen hadn't fled entirely. Instead, they lurked in the waters surrounding the island.

As a result, even though the adventurers had won the battle, they were still unable to leave port.

They could only stay behind and tend to their wounds.

Taking the entire battle into account, Xia Nan's losses were staggeringly steep.

Aside from his heavily injured body that had just barely pulled back from the brink of death, his losses in gear and items were immense.

The three-digit-priced [Potent Healing Potion] was nothing but an empty bottle. The [Bone-Bound Iron Greaves], which had held strong all the way from Rivervale Town, had taken successive blows from the blood-light shockwaves; their surface was pitted and practically ruined.

Even the [Abyssal Current] armor he hadn't been wearing for long had sustained obvious damage. Whether it would still be usable was unknown; he'd have to take it back to a tailor shop for a thorough inspection.

But of course, compared to his losses, Xia Nan's gains from this battle were undeniably lucrative.

According to Lorraine and the others, they had dragged the Bloodskin Shark Beast's corpse materials—along with its anchor weapon—away from the beach during their retreat.

If they followed the unwritten rules of adventuring parties and distributed loot based on contribution, Xia Nan—who had single-handedly turned the tide of the battle—naturally wouldn't be shortchanged. He was guaranteed the lion's share of the spoils.

To put it bluntly, given the actual combat power he had displayed, even if he got greedy and pocketed all the loot dropped by the fishman commanders and elite guards on the beach, the adventurers wouldn't dare raise a single objection.

It simply wasn't in his nature to do so.

Beyond that, from Xia Nan's personal standpoint, his gains from the battle went far beyond material wealth.

He focused his gaze on his own reflection in the tea, concentrating his mind.

A second later, the translucent text he had ignored during the battle surfaced before his eyes.

[Proficiency +3]

[[Gravity Control] lv1 (99/100) → [Gravity Control] lv2 (2/100)]

[Perception +1]

[Feat [Layered Waves] unlocked]

[Ding!]

[Combat technique combination detected: [Fang Hunt] — [Spinning Slash]]

[Automatically retrieving "Battle Posture" path—]